EU Sways Bush Towards Softer Line on Iran

President George Bush declared yesterday that the US and Europe were "united" in their determination to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power and for the first time suggested that the Europeans could negotiate with Iran on behalf of the Americans.

For 18 months Europe and America have been at odds over how to tackle Iran's perceived nuclear ambitions, with Washington contemptuous of the EU attempt to cajole Iran through talks and diplomatic and trade sweeteners. The president's comment signalled a possible shift to support EU efforts to get Iran to abandon the uranium enrichment programme which can provide the wherewithal for nuclear warheads.

While it remains to be seen whether the US will join the EU diplomatic effort, Mr Bush said: "The most effective way ... is to have our partners, Great Britain, France, and Germany, represent not only the EU, not only Nato, but the United States."

Senior White House officials, in a marked change of tone on the Iran problem, are talking for the first time of "convergence" between the US and Europe on how to tackle Iran's suspect nuclear activities.

Stephen Hadley, the White House's national security adviser, told journalists in Germany on Wednesday that Mr Bush had spent much of this week absorbing the EU pitch on Iran and would return to Washington to consider his next moves, which could include rewarding Tehran by backing its desire to join the World Trade Organisation or agreeing to sell civilian aircraft and spare parts to Iran.

Mr Hadley's comments reflect a major change in the US position. Europe and America have been at loggerheads for more than a year, not so much over the policy aim of getting Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment programme as how to get there.

"We have a common objective, to convince the ayatollahs not to have a nuclear weapon," Mr Bush said yesterday, winding up his European tour in the Slovak capital, Bratislava.

But the dispute is over the means to that end. The US has been reluctant to countenance any rewards to the mullahs in return for "objective guarantees" that the uranium enrichment programmes have been closed down.

The transatlantic split is widely seen as diminishing the chances of any breakthrough.

Europe and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog playing the lead role in investigating Iran's nuclear programmes, fear that sensitive negotiations with Tehran are doomed unless the Americans get on board.

That has been the message from the British, Germans, and French to Mr Bush this week. At the weekend, the IAEA chief, Mohammed ElBaradei, suggested that the talks with Iran would collapse unless the US "throws its full weight" behind them.

The EU troika of Britain, Germany, and France has been negotiating with Iran for 18 months, a fraught process which has already collapsed once and could be heading for another impasse when the talks resume next month.

In November the Iranians agreed to freeze uranium enrichment pending the outcome of the talks. The EU aim is to convert that freeze into a permanent and verifiable cessation in return for political, trade, security, and economic concessions.

When the freeze was being negotiated, Washington was openly dismissive of the talks. While there has been much comment that the ambitious EU foreign policy initiative will ultimately fail, there has also been criticism of US policy on Iran as incoherent and unproductive.

Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the senate foreign relations committee, recently told Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, that he had no idea what American policy on Iran was.

Mr Hadley said US policy was undergoing a rethink as a result of the European tour. That could produce the most concrete outcome of a trip heavier in symbolism and rhetoric than substance.